The World Must Coordinate Now to Prevent the Next Pandemic (2024)

Countries around the world, supported by the World Health Organization, are seeking to negotiate an agreement to help us beat pandemics—the ones we're currently facing and the ones we will inevitably face in the future.

Negotiations have been challenging, and initial deadlines have been missed. The path to success is proving rocky, but leaders need to keep on it. A positive step forward was taken at the end of last week's World Health Assembly: leaders pledged to finish the negotiations 12 months from now at the latest, and, if possible, before the end of 2024.

Global coordination and cooperation can save and protect millions of lives. In the early 2000s, about 2 million people were dying of AIDS each year and millions more couldn't get their hands on desperately needed anti-retroviral (ARV) medications. Negotiations helped to reduce prices and expand manufacturing licenses, cutting the annual cost of HIV medications from $10,000 per person to around $60 per person in many of the countries with the highest incidence of infections.

As a result of this work, more than three quarters of people living with HIV today can access medications that allow them to live long, healthy lives and prevent the spread of the virus. According to the United Nations Joint Programme for HIV/AIDS, 20.8 million lives have been saved and 40 million HIV infections have been prevented. We have reached a point that with the right leadership and investment, there is a path to end AIDS by 2030—something many thought was impossible in our lifetimes.

We need to be prepared for the pandemics that will come our way. COVID-19 rapidly spread across the world, claiming more than 3 million lives in the first year. While sharing research and distributing doses ultimately led to estimated 2.4 million lives saved through vaccines, it wasn't soon enough or widespread enough.

Though the benefits of sharing knowledge on pandemic preparation and response are undeniable, as of now we're only doing it in reaction to crises, and too late. We need to share knowledge, and agree how to support each other before the next pandemic strikes. The current negotiations seek to ensure that the next pandemic response is stronger than the last because of more joint efforts on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

The agreement needs to ensure cooperation and coordination especially when it comes to developing and distributing tests, vaccines, therapies and any other pandemic-related products. Health technologies need to be produced and distributed broadly and equitably so that they can reach everyone. This is crucial for preventing diseases from spreading and developing even more dangerous variants.

Wealthy countries have a responsibility to ensure the manufacture of life-saving medical products in developing countries by sharing information and know-how. Developing countries are highlighting the need for binding commitments to ensure that every country has quick access to vaccines, medicines, and tests in the next pandemic, and that no one country or company has a monopoly on making these essential tools. Unfortunately, there is strong resistance to these points.

Sharing is not sacrifice. None of us gain when anyone is left without access to medicines because none of us live in a vacuum. As we saw with the emergence of COVID variants and the lives they claimed, the safety of people in wealthy countries completely depends on enabling a fast, fair, and safe response to the next pandemic in developing countries too.

The Biden administration recently released a Global Health Security Strategy—committing to working with other countries to combat infectious disease threats and to make collective action more "efficient, effective, sustainable, and equitable." This is a welcome step forward, and we cannot stop there.

For leaders around the world to protect their own citizens from pandemics, the best defense comes from a coordinated approach that protects people in other countries too—starting with ensuring that the science and medical advancements that will keep people safe is shared expeditiously and equitably. Infectious diseases know no borders, and our approach to fighting them needs to match that. Working together is the only way to stay safe.

Chelsea Clinton is the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Health Access Initiative, which develops leaders and accelerates solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.

Winnie Byanyima is the executive director of UNAIDS and an under-secretary-general of the United Nations, leading the United Nations' efforts to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.